About 5 or 10 times a year someone will forward me one of these emails in total belief that it is true.
The content of the email is intended to infuriate or frighten people into "spreading the word", and it works quite well apparently because it tricks most people into believing it's true.
This is the modern version of the "chain letter". THIS INFORMATION IS TOTALLY FALSE. My belief is that some dumbass wants to see if he can send an email that will spread all around the world fooling the general public for his own amusement.
The latest one that I got today was claiming that the Pennsylvania State Police are being required to have a speeding ticket frenzy to generate revenue. Here's a paste from the body of the email, and BELOW that is the link showing that it's all false:
"Starting today, Pennsylvania will launch a 30 day speeding ticket frenzy. The state estimates that 9 million dollars will be generated in speeding tickets. 1 million will go to pay state troopers' overtime. There will be 50 state troopers on duty at all times patrolling the 9 main intersections and highways. They are the following:
I-279 north and south
I-376 east and west
I-76 east and west
I-80 east and west
I-79 north and south
I-70 east and west
PA-60
PA-66
US-22
5 mph above the limit can justify a ticket and every state trooper is supposed to pull a car over and write a ticket every 10 to 20 minute. They have issued 30 brand new unmarked Dodge Charger Police cruisers and and are bringing in all of their part timers on full time. If you work in western Pennsylvani a, you will probably take one of these highways. It's up to you how fast you are going when they clock you.
KDKA and WDVE confirmed all of this. So be safe and don't forget
speeding tickets are on you."And the link showing the origins of this email (that date back to 2005) and also showing that it's been researched and is false can be seen here (warning, this site opens a few irritating ad windows if you are running IE with everything enabled):
URLs rewritten, remove parenthesis (http:)//www.snopes.com/politics/traffic/speeding.aspHere's another link verifying that it's a hoax:
URLs rewritten, remove parenthesis (http:)//www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/t/ ... frenzy.htmAlthough I know we're all busy people and we really believe it's important information, it's probably a good idea to spend a few minutes to Google this sort of information before forwarding it on. The site above ( snopes.com ) is one valuable resource where you can check for these hoaxes.